Comment by dsign | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dsign | Hacker News Reader

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> What really needs to happen is we need to figure out ways of facilitating friend formation/maintenance in this brave new world of the internet and atheism. We are going to need some new social technologies to really combat this.

I wonder how in your opinion atheism enters in the picture? My first guess (of your reference) is that certain religions frighten people into remaining in a marriage they would otherwise not be in. My second guess is that religion fills a social glue role by virtue of getting people together to worship or do other community things.

In my own opinion, part of the problem is that we are not atheist enough, and we still believe in the god-mandated union of a man and a woman, properly enclosed by walls, to bring forth children, as the only way worth living. Yes, there are pockets of resistance to the idea, but too little and too late. By far and large all parents out there are pressing their children to marry and have kids, so that there are grandchildren to fill those golden years. And there is mass media of course, which by far and large does the same. But I suspect that, left to their own devices, a lot of young people may choose to stick to their childhood friends of their same sex or otherwise, and employ one of the myriad ways humans can achieve sexual fulfillment. And since I'm on the topic, our species had sex for bonding long before it had religion, language, and the Internet. It's a pity that after the agricultural revolution and the newly found greed for land, God declared that technology suitable only for establishing property rights and for growing the military might of the tribe.

No one said that the religious belief itself is the important factor, and your first guess of it enforcing terrible marriage is insultingly reductive. Your second guess only comes close. It's literally the church, the meeting place where you see the same people every week. Kids meet other kids, adults meet adults. If you think that every person in the building actually believes what the pastor says then i think you have not been to most American churches. The shared belief is a part of it but can be easily faked if necessary. The entirety of social life from the church is the proximity. The vast majority of friends made from that proximity do not spend even half their time together speaking about the church or the belief, especially the children.

Sure, the church has problems, as does religion. All that's being said is that church is the last great, high trust, free, "third space" in America. The fact that it houses a religion is related but not central to that fact.

When I go back home to South GA, I see first hand the majority of people in my own extended family believe everything the Bible says literally as well as people who I went to private Christian school with.

I think the point is that secularism doesn't give you 'instant friends' like religion does. Secularism doesn't have shared culture or common experience to bind people.

For example, there's a 0.5 mile street in the town I grew up in that has 13 churches. This was an area settled by people from around the world, and the churches enabled them to have an immediate extended family when they showed up.

> their children to marry and have kids, so that there are grandchildren to fill those golden years

Which seems to benefit everyone long-term, though (on average/societal scale anyway). I mean what alternatives are you suggesting?

Communes? State run child breeding and education facilities?

If your issue is with monogamy, well that has proven to be the most stable system and seemingly facilitated most of human progress (at least in the more successful societies).

> a lot of young people may choose to stick

You do have a point, it's certainly not necessarily optimal from the individual perspective. Problem is that most alternatives might not be sustainable over several generations so they just die out.

Probably not exactly what you're thinking about but e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakers

I think your second guess is what was meant. Doing church things is a social occasion, a place to meet people and make friends.

From the perspective of my original comment, more than anything church is just a formalized social occasion. Repeated social contact, and proximity seems to be critical to friendship formation.

Wasn't commenting on family formation etc.

This is going on a tangent, but I would like to point out to you that Atheism is itself a religion: It's a belief in no god(s), a belief in refuting god(s).

I'm Japanese, we (Japan) consider ourselves Non-Religious when we choose to celebrate newborn life at Shinto Shrines, weddings at Christian Churches, and funerals and graves at Buddhist Temples with no dogmatic attachment to any of them as an institution as we go through the motions in life.

There's a healthy enjoyment of Christmas involving cake and Kentucky Fried Chicken in there, too.

Thusly, I always find it interesting/amusing that Atheism is usually positioned as the anti-religion in the West when really it isn't.

I'm going in a tangent too here :-) . One can say that atheism (with lower case) is a lack of religion. And then there is the meaning you suggest: Atheism as a belief in refuting god. That one is not a proper religion, but more like an ideology. Or maybe it is a religion in the sense that it can be used as a moral cornerstone.

More than playing with words, not believing in god may be one of three things: irrelevant, a disadvantage, or a door to a better world. It is irrelevant if you observe the rites and traditions of your society anyway, e.g. if you celebrate newborn life at Shinto Shrines, and weddings and Christian Churches, and Christmas, and if your passing through this world does not intend to play with those "immutables". It's a disadvantage if you find yourself in an ostracized minority or simply disconnected from your neighbors. But it may also be a door to a better world if you yourself or your neighbor are gay, or if you yourself and your neighbor are medical researchers trying to understand why people age, or if you yourself and your neighbor are fighting for the rights of women in some dark corner of the world.

An atheist may write books where gods, angels and demons play with humans, and find it amusing and delight others with it. Or they may enter a church and find it pretty and feel empathy for the pain that move people to worship in such places. An atheist may come to terms with their irreverent faith on that pain not having to be an eternal part of the world, and may try to do something to change it.

I think the parallel many draw is that atheism is taking a position of certainty on the question of a God. And that certainty is based largely on personal belief as any evidence for such a question will inherently be weak.

To me agnosticism would be more the absence of religion, because the absence of religion doesn't imply any particular opinion on the existence or not of a God. One can believe there might be a God without embracing any religion.

The idea that someone can be without “religion” is very odd. The word “religion” is generally worthless as used, as for most people, this is merely some vague sense of what was called “religion” in their particular experience. But a coherent common characteristic, as it were, is that it is a worldview with a highest good. Everyone has some kind of worldview and some notion of a hierarchy of goods, usually something absorbed from their environment.

So it is pointless to speak of whether you are “religious”. It makes more sense to ask how you are religious. It is far more interesting to discuss the merits of your religion or other religions than to go around pretending you don’t have one.

The first isn't atheism, it is agnostic - no religion and not looking for one, but open to it if you can convince them your religion is right (which you can't because they are not interested in the topic)

In practice though, unless you're in the Richard Dawkins camp, it's a distinction without really a difference.

The Richard Dawkins camp is pretty large (or maybe just vocal?) on the internet though and so the difference is important.

I vote vocal.

Atheism is defined as the absence of belief which is essentially what OP said.

The fact that we are open to changing our mind if theoretically presented with strong evidence does not make us agnostic.

You’d probably also accept that sun is made of cheese if presented strong enough evidence but don’t call yourself agnostic about the topic given your current knowledge.

Atheism is the position that God does not exist. An atheist is someone who therefore says “I believe that there is no God.”

It is not a mere lack of belief, as agnostics can be said to lack belief in God as well. People who are simply ignorant of God also lack a proper belief in God, but this is not atheism, only ignorance. They simply have not come to terms with the subject and therefore have no position on the matter. An atheist does, however unsophisticated it may be.

This view that atheism is simply a lack of belief in God is common among the intellectually challenged New Atheist crowd and would have been ridiculous to the much more intellectually substantive atheists of old, like Neitzsche (who, btw, while an atheist, found it a horrifying thing; the other classic atheists could be described as world-weary rather than insipid, parochial, middle class triumphant).

For someone concerned with the lack of intellectual seriousness of the New Atheist movement, you seem especially committed to ontological realism. Is there some compelling argument I've missed?

That aside, "atheism" can obviously mean both things—with regard to a belief or the endorsement of an "existence" proposition. In the case of atheism/theism, the belief part plays a substantial role—it distinguishes between B(~p) and ~B(p), the strong and weak positions, respectively.

There are other ways besides ignorance or agnosticism to arrive at ~B. For example, if my view is that ontological claims can't be propositions, then obviously I can't have beliefs about them one way or another. Or I could reject all supernatural claims out of hand. Why would you insist that one take a firm position on whether "God" specifically "exists" or not? Isn't atheism just a consequence of these views?

To put it plainly, logical consequences of other views can make one an atheist just as much as rejecting p outright. One needn't explicitly endorse or reject every mystical metaphysical claim out there. That would be a bit silly, just as it's a bit silly that we've inherited a special word for "atheism" in the first place.

Atheism is not a religion but the single belief that there is no all-powerful sentient being organising the human world, which is a staple of Western religions. The corollary being that anybody believing in God is delusional and/or manipulative. This usually stems from the realization that religious leaders are abusing their followers, using cognitive dissonance to force people to do things that run counter to their most basic interests while serving parasitic power structures.

Unfortunately atheism has the side effect of weakening the social constructs that organized religion brings. Not being a religion itself, it does not prescribe any replacement rituals.

The Japanese stance you describe would better be described as agnosticism, the belief that God's existence doesn't matter. This allows to mix and match existing rituals and beliefs into a coherent whole and puts the individual back into the driving position. It's a very sane way of handling fragmentation of belief and what I believe more people should be doing.

What you’re describing isn’t really agnosticism. Agnosticism is about not knowing if gods exist, not about thinking their existence doesn’t matter.

The mix-and-match approach you’re describing is seems more closely related to religious syncretism.

Once one admits that God's existence is undecidable, s/he can either live in fear of both possibilities or live free of both possibilities. Having no use for unfounded fear, I personally much prefer the latter option. God, if it exists, is irrelevant. Any spiritual activity I perform is for my own benefit and for the good of those around me, never for the consideration of a possible being that couldn't be bothered to manifest itself and make clear what its moral rules (if it has any) actually are.

It could be argued by the religious that in some cases they did manifest(according to their beliefs), and there's actually an excess of copies of the rules if considering the amounts of the Quran or Bible printed.

Atheism is not a religion – it’s simply the absence of belief in gods. Religions involve organized systems of practices, rituals, and doctrines, none of which apply to atheism. Not believing in something doesn’t make it a belief system, just like not collecting stamps isn’t a hobby.

Atheism has a large component of refute the existence of God, make practice of region hard for those who are religion and so on.

There is the I don't believe in God and I'm not interested in anything more. However there are a lot of vocal Atheists who have turned it into a religion with practices, rituals and doctrines around proving there is no God and thus I elevate that to a religion.

You can choose where you want to be.

> rituals and doctrines around proving there is no God

Please provide evidence to substantiate this claim.

Their rituals involve quotes of Noam Chomsky or Richard Dawkins anytime region comes up. Noam Chomsky and/or Richard Dawkins wrote their doctrines which they accept without question.

Maybe that isn't you, but it exists.

This is not reddit nor 4chan.

> but it exists

A religion without gods can exist, and trying to prove God does not exist can be a hobby, but Atheism does not mean either of those concepts.

You're describing a fictitious brand of atheism, one that I -- surrounded by friends and family who are atheists -- have never observed.

Atheists simply don't believe in any gods. Lowercase "gods", it's not exclusive to the Christian God, which a specific god we also don't believe exists.

Japanese are massively superstitious (as are most peoples). That's not quite the same as religion but it's somewhere in the same side of the spectrum.

I would question this thesis.

First, “religion” is not an especially good word in practice, as what people call “religion” is highly varied, enough so that the set of assertions that hold for all of them is exceedingly small and increasingly banal such that it ultimately becomes synonymous with worldview. The vague feeling of what religion is in most people’s minds is highly informed by caricature and parochial experience that is then overgeneralized.

But in the specific case of Catholicism, superstition is, in fact, recognized as sinful precisely because it is irrational (and thus opposed to human nature and the human good) and often rooted in a desire to control what is not in scope for human control or ought not be within the scope of the desire to control. Think “spells” that are meant to control others or palm reading meant to tell you your future or rituals that are supposed to alter your luck like throwing salt over your shoulder or believing that black cats bring bad luck. All these are regarded as irrational in the sense that they have no rational justification, no causal efficacy, or trade in bogus notions, but also conspicuously evil when they entail the desire to objectify and manipulate other people. (These, in turn, are said to predispose their practitioners to malicious influence, as ill will and irrationality are weaknesses that predispose a person to that.) Faith, properly understood, is not the nonsense the popular culture or Hallmark movies tell us it is (i.e., wishful thinking), only either a rationally justified trust or reason supplemented by some kind of divine act. The divinity of Jesus is an article of faith, but the existence of God is not, as it can be know by unaided reason. In any case, the point here is that genuine faith is not a matter of superstition, even if in practice superstitious people often live out a superficial ersatz of faith.

Now, if there is anything that is magic-adjacent in terms of intent and the desire for control, it is the Baconian view of science, not something like Catholicism. Modern science grows out of the Catholic tradition as a sustained enterprise in the sense that Catholicism takes the nature of man to be essentially “rational animal”, and because God (vis—a-vis the Second Person of the Trinity) is seen as essentially Rationality as such (Logos) and the world the fundamentally and fully intelligible creation ex nihilo of God. Baconian science, however, places less emphasis on knowing and greater emphasis on power.

For me, "religion" generally means "belief in invisible people/spirits/beings that have influence on the world". Superstition is a superset of that that includes the subset of "belief in ghosts/spirits/souls aka, invisible people/spirits/beings that have influence on the world". The majority of Japanese (and probably most other cultures) believe in "ghosts/spirits/souls that have influence on the world" but most Japanese might not a few special all powerful ones (eg: "God").

> but I would like to point out to you that Atheism is itself a religion: It's a belief in no god(s), a belief in refuting god(s).

This definition of atheism is non-standard, and dilutes the meaning of "religion".

Let it be noted that almost all atheists will disagree with you that it is a religion. Not all of them, of course, because atheism isn't an organized movement with a doctrine which states what is and isn't "true" atheism.

It's not a religion, though, by any reasonable definition of the term.

The Japanese traditions and customs and social systems you describe are really the part of “religion” atheism lacks. There has been no successful attempt to recreate the social bonds and community of religion in an atheistic context.

> It's a belief in no god(s)

That would be better stated as "no belief in gods". The vast majority of atheists in non religious societies aren't spending much time thinking about how there are no gods, or reading up on how they should believe there are gods. They just aren't thinking about it at all, it isn't something they work at.

To steal a quote: "not going skiing isn't a hobby".

People who marry and live in the same home with their biological children are by far the happiest and most successful by all kinds of measures.

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